Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 233: Sharon Salzberg Makes Me Feel Better

Episode Date: March 25, 2020

If, given the deeply suboptimal circumstances in which we find ourselves right now, you are cycling through anxiety, depression, anger, and apathy, I suspect this conversation with legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg may elevate your mood. It certainly worked for me. I was in a little bit of a dark place when I hopped on the line with her- stuck in a story about how this pandemic is a waking nightmare with no expiration date. But there is something powerful about talking to someone who has spent 50 years dedicated to meditation and Buddhism. She provides a reframing, a dose of perspective, and practical, science-backed skills. Plus, like many of the best meditation teachers, she is quite funny. Enjoy. Full Show Notes: http://tenpercent.com/podcast-episode/sharon-salzberg-232 Sharon Salzberg's Resources: Website: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/ Books: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/books-audio/ Podcast: https://www.sharonsalzberg.com/metta-hour-podcast/ Ten Percent Happier LIVE: Website: www.tenpercent.com/live In the Ten Percent Happier App: https://10percenthappier.app.link/TenPercentHappierLIVE YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb3AWCFuxotrXmgqUHQdwyg See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before we jump into today's show, many of us want to live healthier lives, but keep bumping our heads up against the same obstacles over and over again. But what if there was a different way to relate to this gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? What if you could find intrinsic motivation for habit change that will make you happier instead of sending you into a shame spiral? Learn how to form healthy habits without kicking your own ass unnecessarily by taking our healthy habits course over on the 10% happier app. It's taught by the Stanford psychologist Kelly McGonical and the Great Meditation Teacher Alexis

Santos to access the course. Just download the 10% happier app wherever you get your apps or by visiting 10% calm. All one word spelled out. Okay on with the show. For ABC, to baby, this is Kiki Palmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. For ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey guys, let me start here with a quick reminder. Every weekday at 3 p.m. Eastern, noon, Pacific, we're going to be doing quick live sanity breaks on YouTube, where I will be speaking with and meditating with some of the world's best meditation teachers. We have an incredible lineup this week next week and beyond. The format is we start with five minutes of meditation. Then we take questions from you in the audience. It's, as I said,

before free. And we're going to be doing it for the duration of this crisis and as long as it takes to help us all get through this thing. You can join us at 10% dot com slash live. That's 10% one word all spelled out dot com slash live. Or just go to YouTube and search for 10% happier. I'll put a link in the show notes. Okay, let's get to this week's episode. It's a good one. Quickly want to note that on an audio level, we're doing our best right now to improve the

technology of our home recording game. And I think we're actually this episode is going to be better than past ones, past recent ones, but bear with us as we continue to improve. We don't want to be sending people into studios because of the necessity for physical distancing right now. Our guest this week is Sharon Salisberg, and if given the deeply suboptimal circumstances in which we find ourselves right now,

you find yourself cycling through anxiety, depression, anger, apathy, all those difficult emotions. If that's the case for you, I suspect this conversation with the legendary meditation teacher Sharon Salisberg may elevate your mood. It worked for me because I was in a, I'll be honest, I was in a bit of a dark place when I hopped on the line with her for this, for this conversation. I was stuck in a, in a story about how this pandemic is a waking nightmare with no exploration date. But there's something really powerful about talking to somebody who has spent 50 years dedicated to meditation and Buddhism. Sharon provides a reframing, a dose of perspective, and practical,

science-based skills. Plus, like many meditation teachers, many of the best of them, at least, she is very funny. So here we go, Sharon Salzburg, enjoy. All right, Sharon, thanks for coming, appreciate that. Well, thank you. Coming is a odd term, it's really kind of staying where I have, but.

Exactly. You didn't have to go anywhere for this, just get over to the computer. How are you doing in Shelter and place? Well, I'm doing pretty well. I'm in Barry, Massachusetts in my home and it's it's pretty peaceful and I mean obviously I go through all kinds of things like everybody else, you know, anxiety and sadness. It just feels like this enormous unknown. And, uh, but when I reframe the current experiences, kind of being on retreat, then I think, oh, right, I know how to do this. Just for the uninitiated Barry Massachusetts BA RRE. Massachusetts is in central mass, which is, you have a house on

the grounds of the Insight Meditation Society, which you co-founded with Jack Cornfield and Joseph Goldstein many, many years ago. But I'm interested to hear you say that you're going through a lot of anxiety and other things. I think that's actually useful for civilians to hear that this venerated meditation teacher has feelings. Yes, well, I mean, the anxiety, I think is it's almost biological, you know, it's like, wow, and then I am just grateful all the time for the kind of training I have through meditation practice. So, for example, it's that conjecture about the future, like, what if this happens, and that happens, and you know, the insight, insight meditation society will be able to open, well will it be able to open, how will it be able to open, you know, and I think

you don't know anything, you know, this is all useless, it's a useless expenditure of your life energy, just come back to the moment, deal with what's in front of you, remember to try to stay connected to others, and that's what I can do right now. And so I'm just so grateful that I've had all these years of like watching my mind go off and remembering in the kindest way, the most gentle way, just come back, you know, deal with what's in front of you. You said that you very graciously agreed to come on our new 10% happier live experiment where we're doing live guided meditations in the afternoons and You said something that has really stuck with me, which is that there's this thing about anxiety The not knowing yeah is actually not that bad what is bad?

Well, I'll stop saying it you you continue, okay? so I said was that in in my experience of sitting with fear and kind of the perspective of mindfulness, let's say, if you're sitting and experiencing something like fear, you're not particularly concerned with what you're afraid of, you know, and how it could resolve or how did you get to this sorry place? You should be better than this, but actually looking at the feeling itself. So it's a kind of pivot of attention. And when I've done that, and I've looked at fear in my body, I've looked at fear, kind of the play of fear in my mind.

What I've seen is that for me that despite the world's pronouncement, that we're afraid of the unknown, which of course can be true, I'm mostly afraid when I think I do know, and it's going to be really bad. And it's the stories that I tell myself that really get me going. And even in the midst of that, if I remind myself, you know what? You don't know. Then there's space. And there's actually kind of a relaxation or piece right there.

I that really lands for me. I wouldn't have been able to articulate that, but it's exactly that. I think what I don't like is the uncertainty, but what I really don't like is the horror movie I'm making in my own mind. Yeah, of course of course. And we invest in it, you know, it's like it's our creation and then we claim it as necessarily true. So I'm just walking through a moment, how it goes in your mind in an actual moment of anxiety. What for you after decades of practice, what happens in your mind when you notice you're spinning off? Well, I mean, part of it is, you know, it's very physical. My heart starts beating

faster and I can feel it is just a certain kind of energy moving through my body. And then I watched the thoughts start to play out, you know, first this is going to happen, then that's going to happen. And what if we can't ever open again, and what if that, you know, and then if I remind myself, either you don't know or just breathe, just take a breath, you're not going to resolve this entire problem on behalf of the world right now, all in one chunk. Just take a breath. Come back to yourself. It's oddly enough, it's the same gesture of the mind that I had so much contempt for when I first heard about meditation. I thought, that's stupid. Like, you put your mind somewhere and it goes off somewhere else and you let go and you come back. I thought, I was in India and

I thought, I came all the way to India for this. It's ridiculous, but there it is. All these years later in the midst of this extremely intense situation, it's like the same gesture of the mind. And I think how amazing to have been practicing this. And what's empowering, I think, for me, and I hope for anybody listening to this, is that which empowering, I think, for me, and I hope for anybody listening to this is that you can get better at this if you do it for 50 years, but you can have done it for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, a couple of years,

and anybody can do what you're describing. That's right, and I think it's the regularity of practice. I don't think it takes such a long time to kind of reinforce that muscle group. And then you remember, like in the middle of a bad conversation with somebody, you know, where you're starting to feel that particular anxiety or you realize something and you're not sure, you really did it properly, whatever it is, you know, and you can feel that kind of anxiety, you can do it right there.

You know, you have the physical signal of what's happening in your body. And that's reminding you, okay, take a breath. Just come back. Let's deal with what's here. So let's do Sharon Salzberg's survival guide here. Because, so mindfulness noticing when your mind is raced off into some fearful projection of the future and then catching it, even if

it's gone on for several days or several hours, it's whatever catching it's never too late to catch it, return to, you know, to your breath or to take a deep breath. So that's that's a tried and true technique, which is easier said than done, but can be done. And for sure, a formal meditation training helps. What are the other, you mentioned a few other things that you were doing to kind of ground yourself in.

Some of it had to do with, if I recall, from two minutes ago, social connection, which is not an easy thing to achieve when we're all doing full-time training. It feels a good lifestyle. Yeah. That's true. It's got several aspects to it. One is about kindness. And I think it begins with kindness toward oneself

because I think we have to be very forgiving of what we feel. We may think I shouldn't be disanxious. I shouldn't have this going on. I should be better. I should really, we cannot control what arises in our minds. We can influence it, but we can't control it. And we have to be kinder to ourselves in terms of what we may be going through,

how we hold what comes up and whether we act on it and alienate everybody or whatever it is. That's a different question. You know, that may be more where our responsibility lies is not to take everything to heart and not to also blame ourselves for what's going on. And that kindness toward ourselves, I think, extends into really, first of all, noticing others, even if we're not physically communicating.

And just being aware of the struggles that people are going through and caring in some way, because if we learn anything from this, it should be that we are really part of an interconnected universe that we're not actually cut off and alone, even if we sense the we are at different times. And so I like when I was in New York City, the last physical gathering I had teaching, I was sitting in the audience. This was at the Rubin Museum and before I got up onto the stage, someone came and said to me, this was about 12 days ago or something like that. And she was very, very anxious this person. I tried suggesting something and then something else and and none of it seemed to be making a difference for

her. And then I finally said, well, is there anybody you can help in this time? And she kind of lit up. It just touched something inside of her. and she felt, I guess, capable and some capacity within her and a sense of resource and said, yeah, you know, I do have this neighbor who's elderly and maybe could use some help shopping. And I could slip a note under her door. Now, of course, there's different systems in place. So I don't know if that physical act would actually work, you know, but there's some ability to reach out and to really care, which I think is going to actually be the fundamental juice that's going to keep us going. That's such an interesting idea. I see

this in my own mind too. The idea that an antidote is not going to be a forever antidote, but it's The idea that an antidote is not going to be a forever antidote, but it can work in a moment and I've found personally that it can last for quite a while. An antidote to anxiety, much of which is self-centered in what's going to happen to me. Obviously, it's not all totally self-centered because you may be worrying about what's going to happen to your loved ones, what's going to happen to our country, the world, etc. But a lot of anxiety, at least in my case, is self-centered. The antidote can be just, it's almost so obvious and after school special that it's annoying to even utter the words, but the antidote can be doing something for other people. I noticed the difference in my mind state between what's it like when I'm obsessing about how many likes on my most recent tweet I may have received and what is it like when I'm

running errands for my elderly neighbor? Those are two, the flavor is entirely different. I'm going to go like your tweets. I didn't realize that that was a mission. That's just we're just scratching the surface. No, but I mean, I think it's really, really true. Somebody said to me that in this situation what was being awakened for her were old issues that were true about her childhood, about not having enough food,

and that it was terrifying, even though it's not at all her current situation. And I just said, you know, to her one suggestion I made was, maybe give it donation, it could be a very small donation to a food bank or something. You know, know that you're helping somebody, that you're enriching the life of somebody. And she too kind of lit up, you know, with that,

because that was a meaningful possibility. It shifted something inside of her to think about responding to that, you know, it's a pretty intelligent fear in a way, but also not real. And so it somehow helped her realize, maybe it's that fundamental issue that we're not alone, we're really not alone. And it's so easy to feel we are, and we're so isolated, and it's only me,

and that every act of reaching out, however small kind of undermines that myth and brings us back to something that's actually true. But let's talk about that because before you were saying, you know, one of the things that this situation brings home for you, if I heard you correctly, was the truth of interconnectedness.

I mean, it is inarguably true, a virus that somehow seems to have been developed in a so-called wet market in China affects all of us, an object lesson and interconnectedness right there. And yeah, if I'm stuck in my apartment alone, or I'm stuck in my house alone, or I'm stuck in my house alone, yeah, that theoretically makes sense, but I still feel really lonely.

Well, people felt really lonely even before they were stuck in their apartments apparently, you know, that it's like an epidemic. And that's why. It's another pandemic actually. Yeah, you know, and it's so sad. And I really feel like not an effort to especially now, you know, increase your social contact. Like I only have two friends I need eight,

but it's a sense of connection compared to alienation that we need to cultivate. And it's why that we need to cultivate, and it's why nature is so healing. Or, you know, I think why people are having, you know, virtual, everything, you know, cocktail parties or musicals or, you know, that there is some sense of being part of a hole. And it's the kind of education, unless it's like a it's a process of insight because it is true. You know and I think again you could use you know the tools of mindfulness to see everything that undermines that and has you feel more alone and take a leap you know into and that's partly of course why caring for others or extending, even doing

like something like loving kindness meditation is an act of generosity. And so being in that position, I think, returns us to that understanding of interconnection. What do you think out of curiosity? What do you think is if we're feeling awful right now anxious or lonely? What's a better form of meditation for this moment? Mindfulness meditation where you watch the breath and then every time you get distracted you start again, or loving kindness otherwise known as meta-meditation, where you envision systematically various people or animals and repeat phrases like, may you be happy, may you be safe. Which practice would you recommend for somebody who's struggling right now?

I would probably say loving kindness, which I'm still hoping to hear you teach some days since you posted a loving kindness meditation on ABC news. So I think partly loving kindness for oneself, you know, going back to what I said before, like it's not humiliating to feel bad. And you don't have to dump on yourself and, you know, I have this ideal, like I should be perfect. It's a terrible situation. It's incredibly stressful. And but the stress dynamic is a dynamic and the inner resource or the resource with which we can meet it is going to make a difference.

So some of that is the inner resource, some of that is a sense of community. And if we do loving kindness, classically, it begins with ourselves as the recipient. And so instead of being so down on ourselves for the difficult things we're going through, we can almost have a sense of kind of holding ourselves in greater compassion. And then it does have us tune into that energy of generosity. Like we do loving kind of practice. One way of doing it is the silent repetition of certain phrases like, may I be happy, may you be happy, may I be peaceful, may you be peaceful and people often ask me in hearing the instructions for the meditation,

whom I asking. And I say, you're not really asking anybody anything. It's not like a petition, but you're offering your gift giving. And that process of caring about somebody in that way, offering them that quality of attention and care is, returns us to some stronger place inside of ourselves. And my favorite part, which I've long said, of the classical loving kindness practice, is offering loving kindness to a neutral person, which is someone we don't especially like

or dislike, which just feel kind of neutral about them. And usually we say, choose someone in your life that you don't really know, but you see now and then like check out person in the supermarket or bank teller or something like that. And see what happens is you offer loving kindness to them because almost by definition, that's the kind of person we tend to look through rather than look at. So what happens when we include rather than exclude in these days in teaching, loving, kind of, practice, I usually say, think of someone you can be grateful for that you hardly know. Like who's doing that delivery or who's, I mean, certainly healthcare workers, but somebody that you can think is kind of there for you and for us and hold

them in your heart for a moment and wish them well. So let me get you know and pack something. There's a phrase, I don't know if I'm going to be able to reproduce it faithfully, but something along the lines of offering care returns us to some place that is stronger in ourselves. Because you know, this, this, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're willy-nilly, wantonly dropping words like heart holding somebody in your heart. Even I said heart, I don't know, I'm with Dan. Now, I don't want to overplay, I don't want to overplay this. Everybody knows that I have a bit of

analogy to schmupy language and whatever, okay? We'll move back. I said energy to this, but you're breaking all the rules, but you're allowed to, you're sharing software. But there is, one of the reason why I want to hear you say more about this is because in my opinion presented in a certain way, loving kindness can seem just iridimably syrupy. But you, one of the things I love and I think is quite brilliant about your teaching is that you do reframe it as a strength. So can you say more about that? Well, I think it really is a strength. I know it's so easy to think of it as something

sap, but you're sentimental or gooey or avoiding pain and all of those things, but I think the reality, because it's based on reality, it's that we are all interconnected and just as an example, although those perhaps many beings we look right through, we ignore, we just count. The question is, what happens when we look at them, rather than through them, and we realize, oh, we do have a connection. Look at that. It's not a question of, the practice is not a question of trying to force yourself to feel something or manufacturing anything or fabricating anything, but it's shifting the way we pay attention so that it's more present, more open, broader, and more connected. And that's what's really important. I just think it's such an interesting time too,

because sometimes I'm afraid it's going to be like Lord of the Flies. You know that people are going to just jump on each other in drugstores for disinfectant, you know, wipes or something like that. But, and there's so much fear that, of course, some of that is gonna happen. But, I bet a lot of people are gonna use this time and really examine the question of love in their lives and how connected they are or where the,

what they pay attention to, you know, is there just a kind of obsession with what's wrong, which could be easy now, but it's easy and ordinary times too, you know, just like, what can I complain about? What don't I have? What's wrong? And let's put a little attention into what I do have right now. And that will change things. It really does. You said a bunch of things I want to follow up on, so I'll just name them because I want to come back to them. But so I want to get, I want to talk about how we think the species is going to change if at all as a consequence of this massive interruption or whatever you want to call it. I also want

to talk about you, you use the word love, what a loaded word you wrote a whole book about love. And I want to talk about what that actually means or what it should mean, what it can mean. But let's just stay with the idea of love or compassion or friendliness or warmth as a strength. You know, as you know, I've been working on my own book about this. I have not even close to finishing it to my thoughts as I share them will be perhaps garbage. Can I just say a few things about where I'm thinking of where I'm at and am I thinking? Let's just say if it lands with jobs with you with yours. I think there are a couple of ways I can see it being a strength, at least in my own mind. One is, I don't think it doesn't feel strong to be, to be

wrapped up in my own self-centered concerns. That actually feels vulnerable and feebling, constricting in a inner way. It doesn't feel creative or open or free really. It feels, it's a terrible feeling if you're paying attention. And I'm starting to pay attention after having lived most of my life in that state. The other thing I would say that get, get, where is this strength is if, you know, you said something about like connecting to what's real or what's true. I mean, you just look at, I like science just because it feels real and true to me as a modern, you know, Western materialist.

We evolved for cooperation. It's wired into us deeply and you just have to watch your mind when you do something like hold the door open for somebody or run errands for your neighbor or change your kid's diaper. Well, maybe not that, but you know, if you're paying attention when you're connecting to another human being, it is an empowered, enobling state, even when you're in crappy circumstances. You can be sitting at the bedside of somebody who's dying. You can be, I mean, it brings to mind I was reading this rally, the troops letter by a senior physician at Columbia

University Hospital to the doctors and it said something like, yes, this is terrible. We're going to get slammed by patients and you don't have the, we're gonna get slammed by patients and we don't have the protective gear we need. But think about it, our neighbors are stuck at home idle. We get, and this is the quote he used, the rapture of action. Oh nice.

Yeah, and there is something, even when you're taking action that is, really difficult, there's something empowering about leaning in to help somebody else. So does that, any of that sort of land for you? I think it's really beautiful. The one kind of reframing I would probably do is, maybe I would take out the word vulnerability

in that first thing that you said, I think that our own self-centeredness leaves us in fee-bold, which was a great term that you used and constricted, because vulnerability is also a potential strength. And I think now that I've always thought of vulnerability as truthfulness or honesty. And so there's that benefit when we're actually truthful, like instead of saying you're an idiot, you know, to say I wanted so much more from you, it is a very vulnerable statement and it actually is genuine communication, you know, rather than just lashing out. So anyway, other than that, it was wonderful. I agree with you, but you can use vulnerable in the pejorative, as I was, meaning just like you're opening yourself up.

You're not as strong as you could be because your attention is so inward focused in a way that doesn't feel good. But yes, I also agree that vulnerable in the most positive sense is just Yeah, telling the truth in a way that there's something and this is going to sound like so not me, but There's something about it's like this It no matter how tired I am if I'm talking to somebody about I'm tired as I'm interviewing you because I've been up since three in the morning with 345 working on the news If you're talking about the Dharma or another way to say it would be the truth the hard truth sometimes

It is in liveening and that is also true when you're just telling the truth in some with to somebody in and interpersonal relations. Yeah, and I think, I love what you said, because I think it's actually very true that if you talk to somebody like Jud Brewer, who's a friend, who's a psychiatrist, and who's dealt a lot with addiction, he'll talk about our minds looking for the biggest reward. And it's only because we don't notice that the biggest reward does come from opening up the door for somebody else or, I mean, in this situation, it's not punitive. It is an act of real caring to self-isolate.

You know, it is helping a common humanity in a way, and particularly people who are at greater risk. We should feel the reward of that within ourselves, because it is its own kind of happiness in a way. And strength. I like how you, in our, in the afore live stream, the other day, you sort of jokingly referred to and not loving the term soft skills. Yeah.

And, you know, I, right, I like soft power for the hard thing about the soft things, or I've been thinking recently, trying to language this, like the vast power of the GUI center. You know, there, there is real power in it. It can be, it's not a number of levels, but one of them is what you just talked about with Judd Brewer, the incredible neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and Buddhist practitioner who really talks about how the brain is always looking for a reward.

And if you, if somebody can point it out to you, that one of the greatest sources of reward is kindness, is compassion. Well, the best person to point it out to you is yourself because that's an observation. It's like, oh, look at that. It's like myth-busting. All my life I've been taught, it's a doggy dog world

or I've got to step all over other people to get ahead. And what does that feel like? Is you bring that up? And what does it feel like to think? I wonder if my elderly neighbor is OK. It's different. Do the taste test. Just do it.

And it helps to have boost itself awareness through meditation, for sure. And I think that goes to another point I wanted to get at, and I can't remember, I made myself a note to say what I'm about to say, or to explore the following with you based on something you said a while ago that I've now forgotten exactly what it was.

This meditation practice, love and kindness meditation, it's where you are getting in touch with whatever you wanna call it, your heart, your ability to care. What's so awesome, now I use that term in the most elevated sense. It really does produce awe, is that this is a skill. This isn't just tapping it first. For me, I often felt like, well, am I even capable of love? You know, I'm on the spectrum of self centered. And but you can get better at this and that's extraordinary.

Yeah, I think it is extraordinary. And I think when all this is in a different phase and I'm going to have a t-shirt made for you saying something like the heart is just a muscle. You know, because that's the point. And I think that's, you know, been a difference between, like in the West, there's such a strong conditioning around many strong conditions around kindness or compassion. And one of them is that I sometimes think that we view those qualities as like a gift and you're either have it or you don't. And certainly like the Buddhist psychology, they're trainable, you could say, or they can be cultivated because they depend on how we pay attention. And they're like emergent properties of paying attention differently,

like listening to somebody instead of just having categorized them and dismissing them or not being so distracted, but paying attention or remembering, that person is really doing this thing that's contributing to my life and I just tend to overlook them constantly or look at that person's struggling. Is that different from my struggles? Maybe not so much.

And that's why I think the times we are in, maybe it does have potential to bring us together in a different way. So let's go to that. This is such an interesting question because, I mean, I'm not going to ask you to predict the future, but I'd be interested to get a sense of what your intuition tells you about the impact this as a, as the great podcast and radio host, Chris, the tip that I heard or use a phrase the other day and hopefully she's okay with this because it was a private phone call, but she, I think she'll be fine with this. She called what's happening right now a species moment, and it really is. This whole species is impacted by this. And are we going to be,

you know, beating each other up over Chlorox wipes, or is this going to change the way we live in positive ways? What might those positive ways be? I wonder early in the game, as we are, what are your intuitions now? I don't know if it's an intuition, if it's fair to say I have any sense really, but there is something in me that believes it is very possible that we can live differently because here we are, you know, things that we've held maybe theoretically are very real, and I think there will always be, you know, some amount of fighting one another or clor wife's probably, but by and large, I think there are such real shifts that are possible. And people say that. And I'm home with my family. I'm talking to my family. Or I am so regretful that I didn't apologize to that person.

Or if there's also tremendous freak out and stress and fear. I think that really needs to be paid attention to, but with one another, and as a society. But I'm, yeah, I guess you could say I have hope, which is not a very Buddhist thing to say, but I do have some sense that some possibly some real good can come out of this. Why is hope not a Buddhist thing to say?

Well, usually, I mean, the word hope is really code for attachment. And so they talk about hope, fear, hope, fear, hope, fear. Once you have hope, then you're falling into the process of just cultivating fear. Once you have hope, then you're falling into the process of just cultivating fear. But then I mean that the answer is hopelessness, but rather to see what we mean by hope. I know everything's going to work out, it's going to work out by Tuesday, it's going to work out in this precise way. We don't know, and it's not that easy. Anyway, I mean, the up people in the disruption and the suffering is so enormous. And yet, the underlying truth that we are all in this together,

which has now become a cliche, it's so obvious. And the ways we had been living are untenable. They just are not survivable anymore. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, but I share the hope, sorry to be a bad Buddhist as well, but I can also see a world in which we, this further entrench is inequality

because it's the most vulnerable. And again, I'm using that in the majority of not to judge those people, but not meaning mostly that the weakest in our society are likely to suffer the brunt. It's the folks out there who are cleaning bedpans right now, cleaning ventilators, delivering them to your house, have no choice but to work in situations that put them at risk, who are likely to get sick, and at least likely to have the means to cover the healthcare bills, the people who lose their jobs right now are the least likely to have a savings in order to cover it. So I can see a world in which massive companies that have huge amounts in the bank do fine,

and people who are just clawing their way out of the 2008 recession get shoved right back into a hole. I mean, it's certainly possible, and it would be such extreme suffering. But in a way that's not different, that's the way it's been. And it's just now it's highlighted. It's obvious and the filters have been ripped away. And I don't think that's survivable, basically. I think that that may be what happens. It would be absolutely dreadful. And there is so much greed and hatred and delusion in this world

and in this society and it could happen. But I think theirs are work to not forget. You know, those people, I mean, we, you know, perhaps complain about not being able to go outside, but there are people, as you say, who have to go outside and we are counting on them. You know, we're relying on them for food delivery or whatever it might be. And it's incumbent on us not to forget and to fall into those ways of of real basically privilege and just excluding others. And so I just don't think that's survivable. It may be what happens. And then, but you know, it's just not going to happen in a successful way. I mean, one cool thing you can kind of already seeing is, you know, it's already

starting, is the veneration of these people, of many people that we've long ignored. Obviously, doctors and nurses are getting a lot of love right now. And I think they probably always have to a certain extent. But you know, the grocery store checkup people are, and the people who are stocking the shelves and the people who are making these deliveries, I think we're gonna start seeing that sort of invisible army in ways that many of us may have overlooked in the past.

Stay tuned. More of our conversation is on the way after this. Life is short, and it's full of a lot of interesting questions. What does happiness really mean? How do I get the most out of my time, pure on earth? And what really is the best cereal? These are the questions I seek to resolve on my weekly podcast, Life is short with Justin Long.

If you're looking for the answer to deep philosophical questions like, what is the meaning of life? I can't really help you. But I do believe that we really enrich our experience here by learning from others. And that's why in each episode, I like to talk with actors, musicians, artists, scientists, and many more types of people about how they get the most out of life. We explore how they felt during the highs and sometimes more importantly the lows of their careers We discuss how they've been able to stay happy during some of the harder times But if I'm being honest, it's mostly just fun chats between friends about the important stuff

Like if you had a sandwich named after you what would be on it? Follow life is short wherever you get your podcasts. You can also listen to Add Free on the Amazon Music or Wondering App. You know, what's coming to mind a little bit is, as we're talking, I've mentioned that I've been working on a book, you're much closer to completing a book about it's called Real Change.

I actually have the galley sitting on my desk here. I've not had a chance to look at it yet. And it's about, it coming out in September now, it got delayed because of some things happening in the news that camera work those are. But it's about how to, well, you tell us what it's about. And do you agree that it kind of feels quite your main given the current moment?

I'll be really honest and vulnerable. I hope it's your main. My mind goes back and forth. I mean, the topics are I think totally relevant. Like I have a chapter on moving from grief to resilience. I have a chapter on moving from anger to courage. I have a chapter on agency, you know, finding, it's a little bit like what you're saying before, finding that sense of agency. What can I do? What can I control? So I don't feel helpless and overcome. The examples I use, obviously, are not, you know, from this time.

I mean, the book is really done. It's just like the final, final edit. And nobody's invited me to add an addendum. And I hope it will speak to the universal experience. And interestingly enough, there's an arc in the book which was almost unintentional where I moved from individual action to kind of seeking systems change having that kind of vision.

And then I moved back to individual action where the last part of the book is about somebody in his relationship with his father and his father's very sick and dying and how he was with that toward the end. And so I think that part two is very meaningful. It's like what seems to be the small thing you can do is really what our lives are about. And I just think when somebody's gone through something like this, or the war in the

drug store for the clerks' wipes or something like that, then I hope other examples, you know, will, will seem relevant, not like the nostalgia for a bygone era, you know, that's like different. I keep, but I, and basically I do really think it's, it's germane. I keep wondering if we're going to, this is another thing I heard somebody say recently, are we going to sort of look at history as pre-coronand post-coronand? I don't know. But if I recall, the purpose of the book is to talk about taking effective action in the world to help other people. Can you say more about that?

Yeah, I mean, there's also, because my thing, I'm a meditation teacher and so there's sort of the applicability of different meditations and contemplative exercises in making our action more free. And I have a chapter on self care, but there's a chapter on joy too, how like we have to let enjoy even if we're in the midst of a struggle. And you know, we otherwise will get so exhausted and overcome and feel depleted that we have to be able to enjoy some of the small things as well. And you know, so again, it's about attention and perception and where we focus and what we include and all of that. And for me, that was really born out of my meditation practice. So I tied the different meditations to the different ideas. So correct me if I'm wrong, but what I'm hearing

about the sort of pivot, the arc in the book from individual action to collective action back to individual action is if you're somebody and I think many of us are who cares about, you know, having a positive impact in the world, that's great, but you're likely to burn out if you're actually a mess. Yeah, that's right. Well, we, we see that, we know that. And I was also trying to address the people who maybe have more viewed meditation practice or things like that is is very a certain kind of

exercise, you know, for greater peace and greater happiness, which of course is for, but not really much about connecting to the world around them, because I think that's also misunderstanding. Or it's an incomplete understanding. Maybe that we can use meditation certainly for that sense of being happier, but part of that is gonna be about being more connected. And we can go beyond just feeling more connected into expressing

that connection in different ways. Yeah, that's an interesting point. What it reminds me of is my own arc in practice. I mean, I got into meditation not if you had said, hey, do you want to be more connected to the world? I would have said, what are you even talking about? I do want to be calmer, more focused, less caught up in my own nonsense, but over time, the motivation starts to shift. In my case. Yeah, well, in my case too. And some of that has to do with, well, for me, it had to do with the

degree of personal suffering that I was in when I went to India to learn how to meditate. I wasn't really that interested in other people's problems, you know, but there was so much, ultimately, there was so much liberation from being defined by my own suffering or in meshed in my own suffering. It was like there was room, suddenly, you know, to actually pay attention to others. And in a own suffering. It was like there was room suddenly, you know, to actually pay attention to others. And in a deep way. I've said this a million times on the show, but I'm going to say it again, because it keeps

bringing true is that, you know, the Tibetan, as I understand it, that one of the Tibetan phrases for enlightenment translates into a clearing away and a bringing forth. It's like you're turning down the noise on your own self centered concerns. And that just opens the door for all this other stuff to happen. Unfortunately, a lot of that stuff that's brought forth, it's hard to talk about it without using words like heart or, you know, love and compassion and all that stuff. But to quote another thing I heard once on the show for that a guest on the show told me words that were uttered to her by one of her teachers. The quote was something along the lines. She was complaining about loving kindness and how

Shmoopy and annoying it was and the teacher said, if you can't get comfortable with the cheesiness, you can't be free. Woo, that's very nice. I like that. So is the rumor true that you posted a loving kindness meditation on ABC News account? I did. Well, I actually led a loving kindness meditation on the air.

Twice now, I've done it. They've brought me on a couple times to talk about anxiety and And how to meditation can be useful in this moment Mostly I just steal like your ideas and put them on television pretend their mind and I've been I had seen Ethan Nick turn former guest on the show friend of yours friend of mine meditation teacher author all around good guy Post on Twitter Hey, if you got 20 seconds to wash your hands, maybe just do the loving kindness phrases.

They're happy. They'd be safe. Maybe you'll be healthy. Maybe you'll live with ease. If you do that two times through at a stately pace, it may be 20 seconds. And so I've just been saying that everywhere. And so I've taught it now twice on television. And I thought I was going to be laughed at.

I really thought I was going to be laughed at. Bear in mind, I've been at ABC News for 20 years. I literally just got a bottle of wine in the mail from the president of the ABC Network, graduating me out of my 20th anniversary. If you had told me when I walked or took the elevator up into this building, the escalator up into this rather intimidating building 20 years ago, I'd be talking about loving hindness on the air. I mean, there's no way I never would have taken that. I was raised, you know, a Gen X irony, et cetera, et cetera. So, but the defend the response to that on the air and on Twitter has been unbelievable. So maybe, maybe the moment has arrived. Maybe the moment has arrived and there was kind of tired of happy birthday twice No, I since there's a real yearning for there's at least a certain segment of the population that feels quite strongly that this is

There's there. This is a real moment where we might turn outward So let me let me go back to what I promised before I would bring up with you is love. Because one thing, one word you could apply to this sort of external focus is love. And yet, as you've written about very, very well, the word love is just bogged down in lots of culturally complicated meanings. So can you hold forth on that a little bit? Well, I think that's really true. When I look back at the different books I've written, and if there's a kind of theme

and running throughout the different books, I think one of my, not even necessarily conscious goals, but one of my goals has been to redeem certain words, you know, like love or faith, which can be used so cruelly by people and have hurt any number of people. But I think we can redeem those words and understand the power in them. And so love being really just a profound sense of connection. It's understanding, I think, in the cells of our being that our lives are intertwined. And because that's the truth of things that is very powerful. It does have a lot to do with how we pay attention. I think about all those conversations where I've kind of been there and kind of not and

just distracted in some way and what happens when I actually do arrive and I listen and it's such a different sense of the humanity of being. It's kind of for those who are at home and working from home and using Zoom or something. It's quite interesting because we're seeing it to people's homes. And like when I was doing the thing with you the other day and it was your cat, you know, just playing around. And it's just suddenly it's like, oh, I never really thought you had that kind of wallpaper or you know, like, here we are, are you know we're actually we're so connected

and because you're probably asking me about faith because I brought that up in the Buddhist tradition faith means offering your heart not in the gooey sense you know but it's like you're what you essentially care about or what gives you meaning it's connecting to something in that way. It doesn't have any due belief or dogma or not asking questions or being silenced or anything like that. So I think we need to redeem those words because the words we have and they can help us right now. Yeah, definitely both of those things are true. We need to redeem the words and they definitely can help us right now. Yeah, definitely both of those things are true. We need to redeem the words and they definitely can help us right now.

And I think, you know, I'm stealing this from you, but love has been sort of pounded, pulverized, warped in all of these tortured in all of these ways, mostly by Hollywood, you know, with the strings have to come in, etc., etc. But you could define it down in a really useful way of it's actually just listening to somebody else. It's actually just giving a, I can't say the word I want to use, but like giving a crap about somebody else. It doesn't have to be grandiose.

It doesn't have to be white light doesn't need to be there. No string music, as I said, it's quite down to earth. And I think knocking it off its pedestal in that way. For me, as I said, it's quite down to earth. And I think knocking it off its pedestal in that way. For me, at least, has actually been quite useful. I think that's wonderful. And exactly right. We can do that. And I hope that's all in your book. Yes, it is. As we head toward the end of our time together, I used this phrase that I hadn't intended on using it when I came into this conversation of Sharon Salzberg's survival guide for this sort of viral apocalypse we're in right

now. You know, we've talked about mindfulness, we've talked about love and kindness, and you did reference this final thing I want to bring up, but I think it might be worth a little bit of a deeper dive here of self-compassion. We've been talking about love and kindness, but it's to a large extent, been externally oriented in this discussion. But the argument has been made. Well, it's interesting self compassion because it gashics, it's a bit

controversial in Buddhist circles. I know quite a few people who are Buddhist friends of both of ours who are worried about the phrase because they think it reinforces the self That you're it's more you're gonna get more narcissistic and an already narcissistic age where we're all just taking selfies all the time But but the argument and I suspect you will make this is that if you don't have a warm relationship to your own stuff It's very hard in an abiding fashion to be positively externally oriented. I think that's very true and I think it's even hard to accomplish the meditative process in a way. It's like if you sit down, let's say you're doing a particular

practice where you sit down and you're aiming your attention toward the feeling of the breath, the sensations of the in and out breath. It's usually not that long before your mind wonders and you find yourself in the past or in the future. And the question is, what do you do then? Do you then chestize yourself for an hour and a half? Or do you think, I knew knew I needed a new therapist three years ago, I should have done that.

Or I've been meditating all these years. This is a disgrace. Or can you let go and start over, which is really like the muscle of accomplishing concentration? And it doesn't serve us. It's actually not onward leaving. It's not how to make progress. It's just being that loop of really harsh self-judgment.

I think studies are starting to show that. Self-compassion is not laziness. It's not having excuses. It's actually the most useful way to learn something or make progress or accomplish something. Because it's so much less time wasting, but if you get lost in one of those loops, first of all, you're in terms of the meditation. First of all, you're adding maybe a great deal of time to the distraction and you're also so demoralized, you're so exhausted, it's just not helpful. And we extrapolate from that because the point isn't to become a great meditator, but to have a different life.

So what happens when we blow it, when we get overreactive, when we've lost it. And then we come back. What are we going to do in that moment? It's a really important moment. And that's why self-compassion is really, it's like fundamental to the process. But I think it's just to pick up on your point. I think it's fundamental. You were saying, you said something in there about how it's hard to learn anything. Talk about love as a strength. There you go, right? Because if you do want to be effective in the world, okay, so great. And I think having

some amount of clear-eyed analysis of your own strengths and weaknesses and mistakes and missteps is useful. But do you want to be caught in endless loops of self-laceration? Do you think that's going to up your game? I don't think so. Is instead is having a warm, humorous relationship to your own, peccadillos and neuroses. Is that more likely to allow you to sort of nimbley navigate them? I think yes, and from one of my own experience, I've seen yes.

Yeah, no, absolutely. When I was in California in February, and I was with a group of people, and one of the people present was a psychologist. And she said at one point in response to something I said, the brain cannot learn when it's filled with shame. That's not like a learning opportunity. It doesn't happen that kind of environment, internal or external.

And so even just being smart about it would lead us to the possibility of self-compassion being very important. That explains all of my problems in math class. So I'm in this funny position where we're heading up toward the top of the hour as you and I sit here in chat. And my, the next appointment on my calendar, so you're in a house in Barry, Massachusetts, the house is divided into two parts. You're on one side and some shady character by the name of Joseph Goldstein is on the other side of the house.

And my next appointment is to call him. He said, yes, right now, actually, he sent me a text I was talking him about something. And he said, you know, would you consider me? How about checking on in on me as your elderly neighbor? So, oh, that makes me feel I should leave another under a door. Oh, on semi-retrieves coming out tomorrow, actually. Well, I guess I'm going to knock him into the real world with this phone call. Okay. Well, he's in touch with the real world because we've had like executive committee zoom sessions and things like that. Yeah, because you're trying to figure out what to do to protect

the financial health of insight meditation society, which is a gem and a really to be a little lofty about it, a gift to the world and needs to be protected. So that's something that has my attention as well. Scott, I'm so glad you're going to talk to me for a while. I seem to be walking meditation inside my window, but we haven't spoken. Well, I suspect you'll get plenty of across the hallway, physically distanced facetime in it pretty soon.

Do you feel like we covered everything? Is there something that I should have given you an opportunity to say that I didn't? No, I think I've loved talking to you. I love hearing you and kind of being together in a way. You know, really it's great. I love hearing you and kind of being together in a way. You know, really it's been great. I have to say my, I mean, such a better mood after having talked to you than I was.

That's great. Well, Joseph's a lucky recipient for that. Yes, you really warmed me up because I was in a pretty bad mood earlier in the day. Yeah, so speaking of having redeemed the word love, yeah, I have a lot of love for you, Sharon. You've been a great friend and teacher for a long time. You've taught me so much, so huge pleasure to sit and talk to you.

Thank you. I love you too. No. Thanks, Sharon, for that. Really appreciate hearing from her at this time. Before we go, another reminder, TPH live, 10% happier live. Every weekday, three Eastern noon Pacific, just go to 10%.com slash live for your every weekday, 20 minute sanity break with many of the world's best meditation teachers, including Sharon and

and many others. And finally, before we let you go here, a big thanks to the team that put this show together, Samuel Johns, as our producer, Jackson Beerfelt, as our editor, Maria Wertel, as our production coordinator. Maria, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, if I'm not, I'll get it right next week. And of course, thanks to Ryan Kessler and Josh Cohan from ABC News. We'll see you on Friday, because we're going twice weekly now. We'll see you on Friday for our next episode. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early

and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with 1-replusplus in Apple podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself by completing a short survey at 1dory.com slash survey.